Chapter One
The Apprentice
>>>Morning - April 26, 1583
The late morning sun bathed the grassy fields and forests of southeastern Ise Province with a pale warmth that abated only in the presence of the frequent western breeze. As long as this beauty prevailed, Yamamoto Fuji didn't mind searching for a road he wasn't sure existed at all. The Shinto apprentice stepped briskly with what he imagined to be the adventurer's gait; the movement of a man bound for things unknown. The rough fabric of Fuji's travel sack thumped against his back with every step; his long gray pants billowed like miniature curtains around feet clad in simple two-toed white socks and traveler's sandals, and the tail end of his long-sleeved keikogi fluttered in the light breeze. He swept back the long bangs of his blonde hair and cupped a hand over his brow. Yes, that was definitely the road, just where Genji had said it would be.
It was actually Fuji's first journey. Never in the 18 years of his life had he ventured more than a day's walk from the Shinto Shrine at Ise, and now he had set off into the whole of Japan with no real direction and only vague hints at what he might be looking for. A serious frown crossed the young man's face. Even though his trek would truly be into places he had never seen before, enjoyment was secondary. The reasons for his departure had not only been numerous, but frightningly clear.
The apprentice sighed and raised his blue eyes toward the azure sky above, memories passing through his mind with the serene grace of cotton-white clouds drifting across the surface of the heavens.
>>>Afternoon - April 25, 1583
The muted red glow from the portable lanterns inside the shrine's atrium cast a dim air of resignation upon the hunched figure of the Grand Ise Shrine's High Priest, Yamamoto Genji. Clothed in the same manner as Fuji, his long grey beard and eyebrows actually swayed as he reached into a hidden compartment underneath the Mirror of Amaterasu.
"You know that I am against this," the old man commented in a vain attempt to console his surrogate son. "But due to these most recent events, you also know that it has become too dangerous for you to remain here."
Fuji sighed heavily, tired of the threats, jeers, and stern lectures he had been through over the last few months. "I understand, father."
Genji continued to work with the lock on the compartment, lantern light dancing across his crinkled features as would a fiery sunset over peaceful hills. "It would have been so easy to avoid this, young Fuji. Everyone understood the visions to a degree, and even those who doubted you would not dare have challenged my judgement on the matter."
The apprentice winced at the memory of those 'visions'. He had gone several nights in a row now without a wink of peaceful slumber. The dreams would always show death, destruction, and terror on a massive scale; enough to engulf the entire country in sorrow. Only three parts of these nightmares ever seemed to offer any hope within the disaster.
"A boy crying in the middle of a burning village, a great broadsword resting at his knees," Genji ruminated. "A woman trapped amidst stone pillars who cannot face you, and a fiery-haired girl who greets you with a smile but disappears when you reach for her. They were too vague to be made-up and too clear to be dreams, am I right?"
"Hai," Fuji responded simply.
"There were those who were jealous," Genji continued. "Jealous of a novice who could receive visions from the Goddess Amaterasu even without her complete mirror in our posession."
The apprentice glanced toward the object in question. The oval-shaped mirror more resembled a stained-glass window than a reflective surface. An abstract portrait of the Sun Goddess adorned its surface, with only the right eyepiece missing, stolen several years back by an unknown theif.
Genji lowered his head, raising his normally calm voice at the memory incurred by his next statement. "All that could have healed, however, if you hadn't renounced the ideals of Shinto in front of the entire public!"
Fuji bowed low on his knees, his forehead touching the polished wooden floor. "Forgive me, father. It was not my intent to disappoint you, nor to shame the honorable priests of the order."
The High Priest straightened his figure again, forcing his nerves back to a state of calm for the sake of the boy who he probably would never see again. "I know, my son. You have never been one to act without a great deal of thought." Genji held out a black, leather-bound book in his right hand before speaking further. "You must understand though, Fuji. Many of this country rightfully hate the words of this text. It is a book that has led a cruel sort of foreigner to our land, the type of man who tramples an idea simply because he did not think of it, the type of person who hates a people for what they believe."
"Forgive me," Fuji responded. "But do we not speak here and now of people who hate me for what I believe?"
Genji sighed with a smile. "There are those who do not appreciate such clever witticisms, Fuji. To deal with them . . ." The High Priest extended his left hand to reveal a small metal rod with several hinges visable across its upper surface. "I give you the Fan of Uzume, a legendary weapon that once belonged to the kami themselves. Use it to forge your own path in this world, and to discover what mission Amaterasu has in store for you. Those visions were not given to you for them to go to waste. Remember my words and heed them, Yamamoto Fuji."
>>>Morning - April 26, 1583
Fuji's recollections had carried him quite a ways down the dirt road only to be interrupted by the presence of a fork. The apprentice pondered this for a moment. How does one choose a path when he doesn't know his destination? The hard thinking triggered a low growl from Fuji's bowels, and he promptly decided to break for lunch. Settling under a tree positioned between the forks in the road, he unfolded a rectangular lunch plate wrapped in cloth and began to much on the rice balls and well-preserved greens.
Halfway through his food-induced train of thought, however, Fuji noticed the presence of three pairs of evil-smelling feet. Looking up from his lunch quite slowly, the apprentice's eyes met with those of three burly men who instantly registered in Fuji's mind as local bandits. They stared at him with friendly smiles, but the unsheathed tantos in their hands verified the rogues' intent. The short blades extended just beyond dagger length, and Fuji noticed that two were badly chipped. The one held by the man in the center, however, was polished to perfection. Fuji swallowed his last bite of food and did his best to keep a level voice.
"Good morning to you, gentlemen. Is there something I can do for you?"
The apparent leader, a man rippled with muscles but accentuated by unshaven stubble and a visible beer gut, offhandedly examined his tanto while answering.
"Aw, we didn't mean to bother ya there, son. Your food just looked so good we had to take a closer look."
The other two bandits giggled as Fuji winced. He had forgotten Genji's warning to never open the contents of one's possessions on the roadside. Ever since the demise of Nobunaga, encounters with bandits had become increasingly frequent on nearly every major road in Japan. Fuji decided he would attempt to appease the men, at least while the black leather book left by his true father remained concealed in his travel sack. If they found that, well, there was no telling what would happen then . . .
"Perhaps you and your friends are hungry? I have enough to share."
Fuji cursed himself as his voice broke on the last word. This wasn't how he expected his brave adventure to start. He quickly found a tanto buried in his lunch plate by the leader of the bandit troupe while his companions waved their own weapons menacingly.
"You hear this, guys? He's got food to share." the lead bandit scoffed in a light manner. However, all levity departed from the man's voice upon his next declaration. "Maybe he's got some money to share too."
Fuji was about to stammer a response when a fourth interloper calmly sat down to the apprentice's immediate left. The bandits lowered their tantos and stared at the newcomer as he began to ruffle through Fuji's travel sack. As he pulled out another meal box, Fuji noticed the high-quality katana and wakizashi sheathed in his obi. Was this one of the wandering former samurai he had heard so much about recently? The stranger was clad in a straw hat that hid his face until he looked up to ask a question of the young apprentice.
"May I?"
Fuji only nodded dumbstruck as the man began to eat. This fourth individual was an elderly man, possibly in his late forties. He possessed short black hair that grayed at the tips, an extremely well-kept mustache, and a strangely charming smile to go along with his white kimono, red obi, and black hakama pants.
The leader of the bandits quickly recovered his surprise at the stranger's appearance and leveled his blade. "Hey, who do you think you are!"
The man in the white kimono continued eating silently and seemed to ignore the presence of the highwaymen. One of the bandit cohorts nearly shoved his rusted tanto into the man's face.
"You think you can just ignore us like that! You've got some guts to-"
Fuji had not even seen the stranger draw his wakizashi. The most recently outspoken of the bandit group looked down in sheer terror at the blade sticking out of his belly. The man in white tipped his hat up a notch and tossed the remnant of a rice ball into his mouth.
"It's very rude to interrupt a good meal."
The newly dead bandit keeled over with a hoarse gasp as his flabbergasted comrades attempted to comprehend what had just happened. Fuji decided that now was the time to use his trump card.
"Behold, lowlife scum!" Fuji shouted in his most imperial tone of voice as he stood to his feet and whipped a weapon out of his left sleeve. "The holy Fan of Uzume! Begone and you shall not incur its wrath!"
The bandits looked at the weapon for a moment before laughing out loud. The fan Fuji had produced was indeed crafted out of a fine silver metal, but in essence, it was still a decorative paper instrument held together by that metal. A faint reddish blotch in the center signified that it had once borne the symbol of the sun long ago. However unusual its appearance might have been, however, it was definitely not threatening. The chief bandit assumed a fighting stance.
"Well, I didn't expect to run into this today. A little kid too big for his britches and an old fart who thinks he can play hardball. I was thinking about being nice to ya earlier, but now that you gone and killed Mochi, I think you both need to join him!"
The leader rushed forward and was instantly met both by the glaringly serious face and even more serious katana of the man in white. The stranger sneered as his katana easily held back the bandit's blade.
"You're out of your league."
Despite his huge muscles, the leader found his grip forced backward by the efforts of the stranger. The newcomer's katana spun in a shimmering arc, sparks flying as the tonto's blade was shorn from its handle and buried itself in the dirt several yards away. The bandits looked in stupor at the bladeless weapon as their opponent glared with murderous intent. The stranger uttered one last word.
"Run."
Both bandits quickly obliged, dashing into the distance as if they had a dragon kamion their heels. The man in black calmly walked over to the body of the highwayman he had killed and removed the chipped tonto from his lifeless grip. Setting the tip of the blade between his middle and index fingers, he sighted for a moment and then let the tonto fly. It shot across the air faster than Fuji's eyes could follow and buried itself to the hilt in the back of the lead bandit's skull. His cohort stopped for a moment to see the fountain of blood gushing from his leader's scalp before screaming and running even faster into the woods.
Only Fuji and the nameless swordsman remained. The latter calmly resumed his position to the left of Fuji and continued eating without a word. Fuji sat once more and laid the Fan of Uzume on the grass. He was lost for words until the man in black had almost finished his meal.
"Th-thank you. Thank you for your help, kind sir."
The stranger looked up at him for a moment and chuckled. "There's no need to thank somebody when you've already paid them for their services." He noted the puzzled look on Fuji's face before holding up a pair of rice balls from his meal box. "The way I see it, each of those bandits lives was worth one rice ball in the end. Kind of pathetic, isn't it?" The swordsman gave a wistful look to the open sky. "One should learn to make better use of the life he is given."
Fuji was still coming to terms with the situation when the stranger pointed at the remnants of his meal.
"You gonna finish that?"
The apprentice passed the torn meal box to the man in black before deciding just what it was about the preceding events that still bothered him. "Was it really necessary to kill one of them as he ran?"
The swordsman chuckled a bit before answering. "It's the nature of such men. If I had left two alive, they would have gathered their courage and returned to kill us in our sleep. One bandit has no means of bolstering his confidence without a cohort."
Fuji was still doubtful. "You say that with such certainty."
The swordsman raised an eyebrow. "Of course I'm certain. I've dealt with far too many of the bastards in my time. One piece of scum isn't hard to deal with, but you get a group of them together and they can cause a lot of bad times for a lot of good people."
Fuji noticed a change in the tone of the man's voice when he mentioned "good people". Quite obviously, this was a seasoned warrior that sat before him. Such a swordsman would doubtlessly be helpful in whatever quest awaited the young apprentice, but Fuji knew that he had to make himself seem useful in order to interest his guest. There had to be something that he could say, something that would make him valuable to such a warrior . . .
Wait, what was that huge object on the man's back? He hadn't noticed it before in the midst of the action, but what looked like a large western broadsword was strapped to the stranger's backside. Such a weapon was quite uncommon in these parts, at least to Fuji's knowledge. Better yet, what was this guy's name? Fuji bowed his head.
"I am Yamamoto Fuji. What might your name be, good sir?"
The man in black rewrapped his meal plate and stuffed it in his own travel sack which had been hidden in the tall grass. "Jeffy. It's a pleasure to meet you."
Fuji looked at the man strangely for a moment. "Jeffy? Is that Japanese?"
Jeffy pointed at Fuji's blonde hair. "I don't know. Do you call that Japanese?"
Fuji conceded. "That is a question I have not been able to answer since I was a child. Still, that is a western sword on your back, is it not?"
Jeffy scoffed. "Ha! You're still a child, so I guess you wouldn't have the answer. As for this sword, I have no idea where it was crafted, but it was definitely cursed in Japan."
This sparked Fuji's interest. "Cursed?"
"Indeed." Jeffy responded. "A heavy curse lies on this blade that is said to make its bearer go insane." Seeing Fuji gulp visibly, Jeffy patted him on the back. "Nothing to worry about though. As long as it's sheathed it can't do any harm."
For the first time, Fuji noticed the leather straps holding the blade in its scabbard. He suddenly became inexplicably daring. "May I hold it?"
Jeffy undid the strap that held the blade to his back and passed it into Fuji's hands. "Sure, just don't draw it."
The broadsword was far lighter than it looked. Fuji was pleasantly surprised at first, but soon felt a massive evil aura emanate from the sword. Truly, this thing was cursed in the worst way, but there was something else unusual about it. Ridiculous as it may have seemed, the apprentice felt a certain kinship to the blade, almost as if he were holding a part of his own body.
As Fuji continued to examine the ornate scabbard and contemplate this strange sensation, Jeffy began to speak. "Yeah, a student of mine left that with me and I've been looking for a way to purify it ever since. My protégé said that he found it in the Suzuka Mountains, so I'm journeying to the shrine at Mt. Gozaisho to see what I can find out."
A light clicked on in Fuji's brain. "The shrine at Mt. Gozaisho?"
Jeffy nodded. "I figured they'd probably know more about the sword than any other place in the region, so I thought I would ask the priests there for help."
Fuji smiled inwardly. "You do know that the shrine you speak of has been abandoned for the last nine years, right?"
Jeffy looked surprised. "You're joking!"
Fuji shook his head with false conviction. "Oh, it was a sad day when the fire broke out on the mountain. Only a few priests lived to tell about it, but the way I heard it, the shrine's library might still be intact."
Jeffy pondered that for a moment. "Still, even if I knew how to get rid of the curse, I don't have a-" His gaze shifted to Fuji. "Could you lift the curse, given the method?"
Fuji smiled helpfully. "Of course. I have been fully trained in the various arts of a Shinto priest." That was close enough to the truth, except for the "fully" part. Fortunately enough, Jeffy didn't bother to inquire as to Fuji's chances of success in performing any one of those arts.
"Hmm," the swordsman mused. "I'm tempted to ask for your help in this matter, but the journey could be dangerous. Can you actually use that fan or was that show in front of the bandits a bluff?"
"This thing?" Fuji inquired, pawing the instrument. "This is the Holy Fan of Uzume, given to me by Yamamoto Genji, the Head Priest at the Ise Shrine. Supposedly, it has the power to defend the faithful, but I must not be faithful enough."
He handed the folded fan to Jeffy, who proceeded to examine it. "Nonsense, boy. A fan is an extremely effective weapon when used correctly, holy powers or not." Finding a groove at the base of the fan, Jeffy pressed inward. The supports for the paper instrument snapped inwards, causing a thin yet sturdy-looking blade to spring from the handle. "And it seems I've figured out how it protects the faithful. Still, would you like me to teach you how to use this on the way?"
Fuji smiled warmly, glad that he had succeeded in making himself useful. "I would be most appreciative Jeffy-san, and I would be honored to assist you in the noble cause of putting this accursed blade to rest."
"You don't have to get all sentimental about it." Jeffy said while unfolding the fan and retracting the blades. "And don't call me 'Jeffy-san'. If you're going to train under me, you will refer to me as 'Jeffy-sensei'."
Fuji nodded. "Understood, Jeffy-sensei." He began to relax around the swordsman and commented, "By the way, I knew about the blade. Supposedly, the power to protect the faithful lies in a certain waving motion I'm not familiar with."
Jeffy began to wave the fan in front of his face. "Like this?
A blinding flash of light occurred as Jeffy cried out and fell backward clutching wildly at his eyes.
>>>Night - April 25, 1583
Still fighting back a massive urge to run back home and forget all of the nonsense he had started by reading his father's book and getting involved with that shrine maiden, Fuji managed to come up with at least one piece of cheery news. He had almost reached the outer boundary of the Ise Shrine's territory without incident, and that alone was something worth-
"Hey, Shinto Boy!" a voice called out from the dark forest cover.
Fuji froze in his tracks. Why would they have followed him out this far? He was so close to being home free!
"You sure think you're some hot shit, don't you?" another sinister voice signaled from behind the apprentice. "Being the surrogate son of the High Priest does have its perks, after all. Kind of like being able to say anything you want, even if it defies the very core beliefs of Shinto!"
The already frightened Fuji was horrified to hear yet another voice complement the second. He could already feel intense waves of dread beginning to override his common sense as the third man spoke in a gruff and merciless tone.
"Looks like Old Man Genji thought he could keep you safe by getting you away from the shrine." There was an audible scrape as the men unsheathed bladed weapons. "I guess he didn't expect that you'd run into a bear on your way out, did he?"
Fuji struggled against his fear, but it was just too much. As the three men drew closer, his right eye began to throb painfully, almost as if shifting about in its socket. At this familiar sensation, the apprentice decided to relent for a moment and face his three assailants.
"Actually," Fuji commented in a level voice as he turned slowly toward the three attackers. "Genji didn't do this to protect me."
The three men stopped dead in their tracks, staring dumbly at the apprentice's right eye. The normally peaceful blue iris had shifted to a violent shade of murderous red, and the pupil had become horribly deformed. It now possessed an inner and outer circle, with what looked like geometrically perfect triangles pointing both in toward the center in the diagonal directions and outward at cardinal trajectories. Even stranger, the circles, triangles, and iris moved independantly as Fuji's gaze shifted, giving his already creepy smile an air of deathly intent.
"He sent me away so that those who would bring harm to me might continue living!"
A spectacular rumble echoed across the ground, shaking the would-be assailants to their knees. If that hadn't been enough to frighten them, the ground began to erupt all around three men, throwing dirt, tree branches, and shale in all directions. Having had their fill of vengeance for the time being, the men leapt to their feet and ran like the wind back through the woods to the safety of the shrine, screaming at the top of their lungs at the impossibility they had just witnessed. Soon after their departure, the rumbling began to subside, and the debris ceased its wild dance across the night air in a thick cloud of dust.
Fuji fell to his knees, placing a hand across his right eye as it returned to normal even more painfully than it had shifted in the first place. A drop of blood made its way past the joints of his fingers as the apprentice noticed the glimmer of metal amongst the bits of churned earth.
"That's enough," he whispered. "I'm alright. Really . . . I'm fine."
The sheet of metal sunk back into the ground with a silence unbefitting its earlier show of force, leaving Fuji to sprawl over the ground on his backside, his body and mind completely exhausted from the taxing day.
Someday, he thought. Someday I'll have to figure out just what that damned thing is.
(End Chapter One)
